During the last ten years, the number of children that died because their parents forgot them unattended in the backseat of a car is dramatically increasing. Parents are becoming forgetful about their children, often unintentionally leaving them unattended in vehicles, sometimes during hot weather.
In the past 10 years, more than 400 heat-related deaths in children have been reported. All these children have died after overheating in hot cars. Thirty to forty children die in hot cars every year, and all the deaths were preventable. Eighteen percent of the children died after the parents unintentionally left them in a car, and 30% died after climbing into cars to play.
Parents should never leave children unattended in a car, because temperatures inside can rise quickly. Opening windows has almost no effect, because much of the heat radiates off seats and dashboards. Although rear-facing car seats have saved countless lives, their hoods can also cover babies completely, making them less visible to drivers.
Slightly more than half of the deaths occurred because the parents forgot that the children-many of them less than one-year old were asleep in the back. About half of those deaths occur when babies are with parents who do not usually drive them. Those parents appear to slip back into their usual routine, as if on autopilot.
Vehicles are usually locked with the windows rolled up, even in hot weather, thereby potentially causing severe distress, injury, and/or death of a child left therein. In addition to injuries, children left alone in an otherwise unoccupied vehicle are potentially subject to kidnapping. With the need for multitasking, wherein many different needs are being addressed, and the consequent strain on a parent or caregiver to remember a child in the backseat while being busy and stressed, some form of reminding device would be advantageous.
There are several devices in the prior art for addressing this problem. For example, there is a seat belt restraint and alarm system, comprising electronic circuitry within an automobile key. Once the seatbelt is buckled, an alarm beyond a selected distance from a vehicle will result in the activation of an alarm advising a parent or other caregiver that a child is still secured within the vehicle. A vehicle transmitter/receiver senses the presence or absence of a circuit component or a signal from the key-borne device and if absent, signals back to sound the alarm.
Another known device comprises a weight-sensitive mat or another sensor to determine whether a child seat in a vehicle is occupied. It includes a transmitter and a key fob or another portable unit includes a receiver and an alarm. Generally, if the child seat is occupied and the key fob is removed from proximity to the transmitter. The transmitter communicates this to the key fob receiver, and the alarm is activated.
Even though the above cited alarm system of the prior art addresses some of the needs of the market, an affordable and reliable wireless object-proximity monitoring and alarm system is still desired, that is inserted between the buckles of the child seat and monitors the various connections to ensure that it is installed and the child is seated in the safety seat is still desired.